We’ll be knockin’ on heaven’s door on Sunday, March 15 @ the Aero Theater when we welcome author Paul Seydor to sign, “The Authentic Death & Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid” before a screening of the Peckinpah classic. 6:30 for books & 7:30 for the film.

We’ll send a signed copy from the wild wild west if you can’t make it .

Director Sam Peckinpah’s take on the famous outlaw’s rise and fall is nothing less than magnificent – a sprawling, plaintive, achingly exquisite reflection on loss of all kinds. Billy (Kris Kristofferson) and his loose-knit gang (among them Bob Dylan, who also supplied the beautiful score) butt heads with cattle industry interests devouring the countryside, something that steers them onto a collision course with old comrade and new sheriff, Pat Garrett (James Coburn). Watch for the “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” sequence with Sheriff Baker (Slim Pickens) and his wife (Katy Jurado), one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful women in the history of Western cinema. With Harry Dean Stanton, R.G. Armstrong, Donnie Fritts, L.Q. Jones.

The Book:

The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid The Untold Story of Peckinpah’s Last Western Film Long before Sam Peckinpah finished shooting his 1973 Western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there was open warfare between him and the studio. In this scrupulously researched new book Paul Seydor reconstructs the riveting history of a brilliant director fighting to preserve an artistic vision while wrestling with his own self?destructive demons. Meticulously comparing the film five extant versions, Seydor documents why none is definitive, including the 2005 Special Edition, for which he served as consultant. Viewing Peckinpah’s last Western from a variety of fresh perspectives, Seydor establishes a nearly direct line from the book Garrett wrote after he killed Billy the Kid to Peckinpah’s film ninety-one years later and shows how, even with directors as singular as this one, filmmaking is a collaborative medium. Art, business, history, genius, and ego all collide in this story of a great director navigating the treacherous waters of collaboration, compromise, and commerce to create a flawed but enduringly powerful masterpiece.

About the Author Paul Seydor is an Oscar-nominated film editor and a professor in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in California. He is the author of Peckinpah: The Western Films—A Reconsideration (1997).

Quotes “A superlative achievement. This exceptional and engrossing book explores the genesis of a particular film while describing the turmoil in film production that we like to call “collaboration.” I cannot call to mind another book that is so illuminating on the great variety of pressures on a film idea that begins in the writing and the shooting, but may climax in the internecine warfare that carries the footage to the screen. In addition, we get a rich portrait–as good as has been achieved–of Peckinpah, the unruly genius who made many enemies but reserved first place on that team for himself.” —David Thomson

“Sam Peckinpah was a brilliant and self-destructive cinematic poet, and no one has studied his work more thoroughly than Paul Seydor. This book is an intimate and haunting portrait of the artist and his last Western, and it is a must-read for those who care about Peckinpah and the genre.”—Glenn Frankel, author of The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend “

In Paul Seydor’s fascinating book on Peckinpah’s classic, we discover how a fastidious novelist, a maverick screenwriter, and a genius filmmaker all drew from and reshaped the Kid’s legend, the end result being the best Billy the Kid movie ever made.” —Mark Lee Gardner, author of To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West.

Kim Gordon is a musician, vocalist, visual artist, record producer, video director, fashion designer, and actress. Gordon, who started out as a visual artist, rose to prominence as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth, which she formed with Thurston Moore in 1981. In 1990, Gordon and Spike Jonze co-directed The Breeders video “Cannonball.” In 1993 she launched her own fashion line, X-Girl, and continues to work in fashion from time to time. She has appeared in several films, including Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, as well as episodes of Gossip Girl and Girls.

In 2012, after the breakup of Sonic Youth, Gordon formed Body/Head with friend Bill Nace. In June 2015, the 303 Gallery in New York will feature a show of her work. In her memoir, Girl in a Band, Kim Gordon tells her story — of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll. She opens up as never before, telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the ’60s and ’70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band. Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and ’90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves. Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.

Aimee Mann is a singer/songwriter known for her early hits with ‘Til Tuesday and her later solo work. She dropped out of the Berklee School of Music to join a punk band, setting off her musical career at an early age. Soon she would co-found ‘Til Tuesday, a new-wave band that found success with its first album, Voices Carry. The title track would become an MTV favorite, propelling Mann and the band into the spotlight. It wasn’t long before Mann struck out on her own, though, leaving the band behind for a solo career. Critical success but commercial weakness marked her early efforts, but Mann found rejuvenation in her soundtrack work for the film Magnolia. She took home an Oscar and a Grammy for “Save Me,” and her output began to ramp up, including such albums as The Forgotten Arm and Charmer.

About the Book

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith’s Just Kids. At its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves. Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist. Less For many, Kim Gordon, vocalist, bassist and founding member of Sonic Youth, has always been the epitome of cool. Sonic Youth is one of the most influential and successful bands to emerge from the post-punk New York scene, and their legacy continues to loom large over the landscape of indie rock and American pop culture. Almost as celebrated as the band’s defiantly dissonant sound was the marriage between Gordon and her husband, fellow Sonic Youth founder and lead guitarist Thurston Moore. So when Matador Records released a statement in the fall of 2011 announcing that—after twenty-seven years—the two were splitting, fans were devastated. In the middle of a crazy world, they’d seemed so solid. What did this mean? What comes next? What came before? In Girl in a Band, the famously reserved superstar speaks candidly about her past and the future. From her childhood in the sunbaked suburbs of Southern California, growing up with a mentally ill sibling who often sapped her family of emotional capital, to New York’s downtown art and music scene in the eighties and nineties and the birth of a band that would pave the way for acts like Nirvana, as well as help inspire the Riot Grrl generation, here is an edgy and evocative portrait of a life in art. Exploring the artists, musicians, and writers who influenced Gordon, and the relationship that defined her life for so long, Girl in a Band is filled with the sights and sounds of a pre-Internet world and is a deeply personal portrait of a woman who has become an icon.

Norman Lear has enjoyed a long career in television and film, and as a political and social activist and philanthropist. He teamed with director Bud Yorkin to form Tandem Productions, and together they produced several feature films, with Mr. Lear taking on roles as executive producer, writer, and director. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1967 for his script for Divorce American Style. In 1970, CBS signed with Tandem to produce All in the Family, which first aired on January 12, 1971 and ran for nine seasons. It earned four Emmy Awards for Best Comedy series as well as the Peabody Award in 1977. All in the Family was followed by a succession of other television hit shows including Maude, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Concerned about the growing influence of radical religious evangelists, Mr. Lear decided to leave television in 1980 and formed People For the American Way, a non-profit organization designed to speak out for Bill of Rights guarantees and to monitor violations of constitutional freedoms. Mr. Lear’s business career continued in 1982, when Tandem Productions and his other company, T.A.T. Communications, were folded into Embassy Communications, which was sold in 1985. He then created and is currently chairman of Act III Communications, a multimedia holding company with interests in television, motion pictures, and licensing. In 1999, President Clinton bestowed the National Medal of Arts on Mr. Lear, noting that “Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it.” He also has the distinction of being among the first seven television pioneers inducted in 1984 into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

In addition to People for the American Way, Mr. Lear has founded other nonprofit organizations, including the Business Enterprise Trust (1989- 2000), which spotlighted exemplary social innovations in American business; the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication (2000-present), a multidisciplinary research and public policy center dedicated to exploring the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society; and with his wife, Lyn, co-founded the Environmental Media Association (1989-present), to mobilize the entertainment industry to become more environmentally responsible. Visit his website. In 2001, Lyn and Norman Lear purchased one of the few surviving original copies of the Declaration of Independence. During the decade that they owned it, they shared it with the American people by touring it to all 50 states. As part of this Declaration of Independence Road Trip, he launched Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan youth voter initiative that registered well over four million new young voters in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections.

Jane Lynch cut her theatrical teeth at The Second City, Steppenwolf Theatre and in many church basements all over the greater Chicagoland area. Recent film credits include A.C.O.D, Three Stooges, Wreck-It Ralph, Julie & Julia, Shrek Forever After, The Post Grad Survival Guide, Paul and Brownie Masters. Past film work includes Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind and Best in Show, as well as Role Models, The Rocker, Spring Breakdown, the animated film Space Chimps, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Walk Hard, Talladega Nights, The 40 Year old Virgin, Margaret Cho’s Celeste and Bam Bam, Alan Cumming’s Suffering Man’s Charity, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Sleepover, and Surviving Eden. Jane can currently be seen in the Ryan Murphy television series Glee on FOX for which she is an Emmy and Golden Globe winner for portraying the iconic television character, Sue Sylvester. Some of her other recent credits include the STARZ series Party Down, Lovespring, a Lifetime original series, Desperate Housewives and Weeds as well as the last season of The L Word opposite Cybill Shepherd. She has recurring roles on Two and a Half Men, Criminal Minds and The New Adventures of Old Christine. Starting this May, Jane will be featured in the Broadway production of Annie as Miss Hannigan in a limited Broadway run at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theater in New York. She also will be seen hosting NBC’s newest game show hit, Hollywood Game Night, produced by Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner later this summer.

Always happy to bring copies of the very fine read , “Lee Marvin-Point Blank” by author Dwayne Epstein to any screening opportunity we can. On Wednesday the 25th join us for the awesome Lee Marvin/ John Boorman double bill, “Point Blank” & “Hell In the Pacific”.

Dwayne Epstein will sign copies of his book Lee Marvin: Point Blank at 6:30 PM in the Aero lobby.

The first full-length, authoritative, and detailed story of the iconic actor’s life to go beyond the Hollywood scandal-sheet reporting of earlier books, this account offers an appreciation for the man and his acting career and the classic films he starred in, painting a portrait of an individual who took great risks in his acting and career. Although Lee Marvin is best known for his icy tough guy roles—such as his chilling titular villain in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or the paternal yet brutally realistic platoon leader in The Big Red One—very little is known of his personal life; his family background; his experiences in WWII; his relationship with his father, family, friends, wives; and his ongoing battles with alcoholism, rage, and depression, occasioned by his postwar PTSD. Now, after years of researching and compiling interviews with family members, friends, and colleagues; rare photographs; and illustrative material, Hollywood writer Dwayne Epstein provides a full understanding and appreciation of this acting titan’s place in the Hollywood pantheon in spite of his very real and human struggles.

POINT BLANK 1967, Warner Bros., 92 min, USA, Dir: John Boorman Director John Boorman’s neo-noir is also a brain-twisting deconstruction that changed the look of action films. Lee Marvin, seemingly back from the dead, is out for payback. With John Vernon, Angie Dickinson.

HELL IN THE PACIFIC 1968, Buena Vista Pictures, 103 min, USA, Dir: John Boorman “They hunted each other as enemies…they tormented each other as savages…they faced each other as men!” This tense World War II drama stars two real-life veterans of that conflict, Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, as soldiers stranded on a Pacific island who must learn to cooperate in order to survive. With minimal reliance on dialogue, director John Boorman’s third feature (and second with Marvin) benefits enormously from Conrad Hall’s cinematography and Lalo Schifrin’s music.

Join us for a special event on the occasion of the release of Herb Alpert’s 40th album, In the Mood, his upcoming concert tour and the release of Grammy® Award–winning singer Lani Hall Alpert’s audio book, Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories. After winning his ninth Grammy in 2014 and being honored by President Obama with the National Medal of Arts in 2013, “trumpet legend” (Wall Street Journal) Herb Alpert’s new album entitled ‘In The Mood’, has Alpert playing a diverse array of standards and originals. We are excited to host Herb Alpert and with his wife, Grammy® Award–winning singer Lani Hall, before they embark on an extensive American tour and spring concerts in Tokyo, Japan. Aside from his impressive career as a musician, he and his partner, Jerry Moss, founded A&M Records, which was the largest independent record company in the world, and in 2006 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

An acclaimed painter and sculptor with work in the permanent collection at MOCA in Los Angeles, with gallery shows and public art that has been shown around the US and Europe. Alpert is also a Tony Award–winning producer (‘Angels in America’), and a philanthropist who has donated over $130 million towards arts education through the Herb Alpert Foundation. Visit his website.

Lani Hall rose to fame in 1966 as the lead singer of Sergio Mendes’ group, Brasil ’66. Brasil ’66 was signed to A&M Records by the co–founder of the label (and Lani’s future husband), Herb Alpert. Lani has the distinction of recording more than 22 albums in three different languages, four alongside her husband, and in 1983, she sang the title song for the James Bond film, Never Say Never Again. In 1986 Hall earned her first Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Performance for her album, Es Facil Amar.

Born in Chicago, Lani also started writing at a young age and Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories is her first book. The intensely personal narrative is an intimate collection of short stories that features fiction and non–fiction from Lani’s personal history. Visit her website. Download audio book. When talking about his recent success, Alpert remains humble. “Making music is a natural thing for me to do,” he says. “I love melodies from standards and I try to present them in a different way that hasn’t been heard before.” In The Mood is a pop jazz album which opens with Glen Miller’s classic, Chatanooga Choo Choo, and closes with America The Beautiful, where Alpert employs percussion from all seven continents to “reflect the melting pot” of the United States. “Few people can claim to be a Renaissance man in this complex age, but Herb Alpert might be one of them,” says The New York Times. And few can rival Alpert’s staggering resume: as a solo artist and as the leader of the Tijuana Brass, he has sold over 72 million records, and placed 28 albums in the Billboard 200, including five #1s. He has scored 14 platinum and 15 gold albums, and is the only artist ever to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist and instrumentalist. At one point Alpert and the Tijuana Brass simultaneously had four albums in the Top 10. Listen to “Chattanooga Choo Choo” at the Wall Street Journal.

Deborah Voigt is one of the world’s leading dramatic sopranos, internationally revered for her performances in the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. She has also portrayed some of the iconic heroines in Italian opera to great acclaim. An active recitalist and performer of Broadway standards and popular songs, Voigt appears regularly, as both performer and host, in the Metropolitan Opera’s The Met: Live in HD series, which is transmitted live to movie theaters across the United States and overseas. She is also co-creator of Voigt Lessons, a one-woman show she developed with award-winning playwright Terrence McNally and director Francesca Zambello. Through her stage performances and television appearances, she is known for the singular power and beauty of her voice. A leading dramatic soprano, she has portrayed some of the iconic heroines in German and Italian opera to great acclaim, including Brünnhilde in Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle, perhaps the most challenging role in all music. An active recitalist and performer of Broadway standards and popular songs, Voigt has an extensive discography and has given many enthusiastically received master classes. Beloved as a “Dramatic soprano and down-home Diva,” she gained renown beyond that rarefied world when she was summarily fired from a production at London’s Royal Opera House. She was perceived, it seemed, as too large for the little black dress she was supposed to wear (in an art form famous for its zaftig divas). A risky gastric bypass surgery led to major weight loss, but much of her adoring public never knew about the fallout of that dramatic decision: an insidious cross-addiction that led her from food addiction to severe alcoholism, depression, and the brink of destruction. In her candid memoir, Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva, Voigt for the first time shares her story—of music and faith, of devastating addictions and recovery, and of the backstage dramas behind the glamorous curtain that is opera.

Join the LARE as we tap our way to the elegant ALEX Theater for a much deserved night of celebration honoring the Nicholas Brothers.

Prospect House Entertainment, In Partnership with Glendale Arts and In Association with the Tony Nicholas Family, Presents “IN PERSON” – THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS TRIBUTE

Hollywood’s greatest tap-dance team will be honored in a star-studded gala event, live at the historic 1400-seat Alex Theatre in Glendale, California. Join us as we chronicle Fayard and Harold Nicholas’ rise to fame and stardom, from their humble beginnings in Philadelphia to pioneering and redefining the tap genre. This one night only, special event will feature Q&As with Nicholas family members, celebrity friends and co-stars, rare and never-before-seen home movie footage, movie trailers, clips from their dazzling feature film performances, dramatic on-stage reenactments from landmark moments in their lives, and amazing tap numbers performed by the very best dancers in the country, choreographed by the peerless Cathie Nicholas, Fayard’s granddaughter.

Special Q&A guests include Gloria Hendry, best known for starring as Rosie Carver in the Roger Moore James Bond film Live and Let Die.

Stay tuned for more guest announcements coming soon!

We will be there with the author & commentator RUSTY FRANK who will be signing her book “TAP-the Greatest Stars and their Stories 1900-1955.

We’ll also bring copies of the book, “Brotherhood In Rhythm-the Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers”.

This will be a wonderful night and you can get your tickets at : ALEXTHEATRE.ORG

USE the coupon code – PHENich at checkout at get 2 TICKETS FOR THE PRICE OF 1!

ADA ACCESSIBLE SEATING INFORMATION All seating areas in the Alex Theatre other than the ADA Accessible seating area [Orchestra Row X] require a minimum of 8 stairs to access, and there is NO ELEVATOR. If you require ADA accessible seating, tell the Ticket Agent at the beginning of the transaction; if purchasing online, select from the ADA Accessible section. All ADA Accessible seating is Reserved Seating with specific Row and Seat Number designations on the tickets.

Seth Grahame-Smith’s latest book is The Last American Vampire. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Unholy Night. In addition to adapting the screenplay for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth also wrote Tim Burton’s film Dark Shadows.

For more information, visit www.sethgs.com and follow him on Twitter at @sethgs.

Diablo Cody is the pen name for Brook Busey-Maurio. She is an screenwriter, producer and director. She achieved critical acclaim for her debut script Juno (2007), winning several awards including the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. She first became known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in her blog and in her memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper (2005). She is also known for creating, writing and producing Showtime’s television series United States of Tara (2009-2011) and for writing and producing the films Jennifer’s Body (2009) and Young Adult (2011). Her directorial debut, Paradise, was released in 2013. Follow her on Twitter at @diablocody.

In his new book, The Last American Vampire, Seth Grahame-Smith goes back into the research and vampirist lens that defined Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but turned his attention to a new time period. The Last American Vampire is an ambitious, century-spanning, vampire alterna-history, reimagining 20th Century American history through the eyes of America’s oldest immortal, the vampire Henry Sturges. In Reconstruction-era America, Henry is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln’s shocking death. His journey will first send him to England for an unexpected encounter with Jack the Ripper, then to New York City for the birth of a new American century, the dawn of the electric era of Tesla and Edison, and the blazing disaster of the 1937 Hindenburg crash. Along the way, Henry goes on the road in a Kerouac-influenced trip as Seth Grahame-Smith ingeniously weaves vampire history through Russia’s October Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, and the JFK assassination. The final, elegiac act ends in 2001 with the vampire species in steep decline, and a world-weary Henry retreating from civilization to an upstate New York mansion.

The first signing event I ever held in this store was with Marc Wanamaker . He and Robert Nudelman had just authored “Early Hollywood” and I was eager to start doing signings & events at Larry Edmunds Bookshop when I finally got the opportunity. The slides were projected on a couple sheets I tacked up to the wall. Not long after that, Marc & Robert pulled up outside with a beautiful 7 foot screen that is mounted to my balcony and used to this day. I say a little thank you every I drop the screen for another great event here in the store.

Marc & E.J. are repeat offenders, and I one for one am glad about that. Our first in-store of 2015 is “Early Poverty Row”, the latest Arcadia Publishing Images of America volume by Marc & fellow author & historian E.J. Stephens.We welcome the boys for a special Saturday afternoon get together to talk about the little studios that could and that stuff we never get enough of, the history of Hollywood, and the history of the movies we love.

The history of Hollywood is often seen only through the lens of the major studios, forgetting that many of Tinseltown’s early creations came from micro-studios stretched along Sunset Boulevard in an area disparagingly known as Poverty Row. Here, the first wave of West Coast moviemakers migrated to the tiny village of Hollywood, where alcohol was illegal, actors were unwelcome, and cattle were herded down the unpaved streets. Most Poverty Row producers survived from film to film, their fortunes tied to the previous week’s take from hundreds of nickelodeon tills. They would routinely script movies around an event or disaster, often creating scenarios using sets from more established productions, when the bosses weren’t looking, of course. Poverty Row quickly became a generic term for other fly-by-night studios throughout the Los Angeles area. Their struggles to hang on in Hollywood were often more intriguing than the serialized cliffhangers they produced.

E.J. Stephens is a historian, writer, and tour guide from Newhall, California. Marc Wanamaker is a founder of the Hollywood Heritage Museum. In 1973, he established Bison Archives, one of Southern California’s most notable repositories of entertainment heritage. Early Poverty Row Studios is their fourth cowritten Arcadia publication.

We hope you can join us next Saturday,the 17th, but if not, we’ll yell, “Cut! Print!” and send the signed copy your way!

Join us for our second date of the week at the Billy Wilder Theater, the perfect venue for an evening to celebrate writer/producer & Hollywood literary legend Charles Brackett.

Author & Hollywood historian Anthony Slide will be the guest on hand to introduce “The Lost Weekend” & “Five Graves to Cairo” as well as sign his new book,

“It’s the Pictures That Got Small” Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood’s Golden Age – Edited by Anthony Slide/Foreword by Jim Moore

Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter Charles Brackett was an extremely observant and perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry during its most exciting years. He is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as “the happiest couple in Hollywood,” collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Blvd (1950). In this annotated collection of writings taken from dozens of Brackett’s unpublished diaries, leading film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett’s critical contribution to Wilder’s films and Hollywood history while enriching our knowledge of Wilder’s achievements in writing, direction, and style. Brackett’s diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for Ninotchka (1939), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), Ball of Fire (1941), The Major and the Minor (1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Blvd, recounting the breakthrough and breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. Brackett was also a producer, served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, was a drama critic for the New Yorker, and became a member of the exclusive literary club, the Algonquin Round Table. Slide gives readers a rare, front row seat to the Golden Age dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO and the innovations of legendary theater and literary figures, such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker. Through Brackett’s witty, keen perspective, the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood’s most significant films come alive, and readers will recognize their reach in the Hollywood industry today.

If you’re stuck in Norma Desmond’s house, or are out on a lost weekend & can’t join us, we’ll be happy to get a copy signed and sent your way!

More info on this program & other screenings at the Billy Wilder Theater can be found at : www.cinema.ucla.edu

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthony Slide is the author or editor of more than two hundred books on the history of popular entertainment. He has served as both associate archivist of the American Film Institute and as resident film historian of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His most recent publications include Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses; Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazines: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers; and Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, Bit Players, and Stand-Ins.